


A Heart Unbroken

by jordangirl



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jordangirl/pseuds/jordangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maleficent reflects on her relationship with Diaval and how it has changed her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Heart Unbroken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leidolette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/gifts).



As a child growing up in The Moors, I never dreamed that I would become friends with a crow. Well, to be honest I didn’t know that I would have true friends – a relationship of mutual respect and care.

Oh, don’t get me wrong – I was kind to all creatures and all parts of The Moors, but, well, I was always different than the others. Even the fairies.

They were small. I was large. Well, larger than they certainly. 

Soon, none of them would play with me – especially after my parents… It was as if they feared that whatever “curse” had caused my misfortune would rub off on them.  
Not that I really minded. I was quite content to be on my own and befriend all the other creatures who didn’t seem to care that I was larger than the rest of my kind, or that I was an orphan. They accepted and welcomed me as I was, and perhaps that is how I so easily slipped into the role of their leader and protector. I knew too well what it was to be an outcast.

Perhaps that’s why I was initially drawn to Diaval when I was walking that day.

Oh, true, I had been puzzling over how to determine what Stefan was plotting. Clearly after he drugged me and stole my wings he was not to be trusted.  
But when I saw him trapped in the farmer’s net, I have to be honest. My first thought was that of saving an innocent creature who in the farmer’s eyes was clearly condemned to death simply for being who he was born to be. 

So I helped him out.

Oh of course he wasn’t the most grateful thing ever when I turned him into a man to save him, but in retrospect he has admitted that as angry as the farmer was, pretty much anything but a human form would have likely spelled death for him.

And what of it if our relationship began with him serving as my wings to return the favor of my saving him? Things change.

We gradually became friends, especially once Aurora was sent to the woods with those incompetents who had no business trying to raise a child.

Diaval was actually the first to see that I had crossed the line between hatred and love when it came to the child. She tells me that in the human world there is a saying that it’s a thin line between love and hate, and I suppose I can believe that.

Yes, at first my desire to see her survive was to see my curse carried out. But Diaval was the one who would carry flowers to her that their nectar might nourish her. Somehow he knew – somehow he saw beneath everything.

I heard his snicker when the little beastie came walking up to me one day and demanded to be picked up. I told myself I was only doing it so the child would have some physical contact with another being since the twits were so wrapped up in themselves and their silliness to care. I saw his look when I caused the roots to save her when she wandered off the cliff. And so many other times. Even before I was ready to admit it to myself, he saw it.

How well I remember the conversation after the day on the cliff…

“Why don’t you just admit it?” he asked, looking at me as we sat, watching them pack up and head back to their cottage.

“Admit what?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at him, trusting that taking my eyes off of her for one moment when they were walking further away from the edge would not result in lasting damage.

“You care for her,” he said.

“The little beastie?” I scoffed.

“You call her a beastie,” he said. “Yet you have seen to her survival thus far.”

I rolled my eyes. “I merely want to ensure that she lives long enough to receive my…gift,” I said simply.

“You mean your curse,” he said. And I could hear the disdain in his voice.

“Gift, curse… Same thing,” I said, turning back to watch the little quartet continue up the hill.

“No…there’s more to it,” he said.

“Enough,” I said, glaring at him.

So he dropped it for the moment.

And yet, the more I observed the child, the more I got to know her once I brought her into The Moors, the more I had to admit that he was right.

The little beastie had wormed her way into my heart. The fact that my kiss is what awakened her from my curse – a curse that was to be forever because true love didn’t exist as far as I knew. 

Before Aurora.

After Aurora everything changed.

I saw that just as Aurora had opened a section of my heart I though killed by her father and his selfish action, Diaval had opened a door into the part of me that could trust again.  
Just as I thought I could never love again after Stefan, I never thought I could trust again. Once shattered, trust is difficult to gain – not just for the person who did the act that shatters trust but for everyone who comes into the other’s life afterwards.

Yes I sent Diaval to gain information, to be my spy and go where I could not, but if I’m being honest, I wasn’t completely trusting of him. Not at first. But gradually I began to see that he would do anything for me. And not just because I’d saved him.

Before everything changed, before the ultimate battle, yes, he was my helpmate, my…servant isn’t really the word. Because in spite of everything, we were friends. Though he assisted me as I needed him to – only truly complaining about the wolf form I needed and chose one time. As distressed nas he was at that form, he could easily have turned on me, but he chose not to.

And after… Well, after, when I had my wings back, our relationship truly evolved into the friendship that had been lurking under the surface, growing stronger the whole time we knew each other.

Oh, I don’t think there will ever be that kind of love between us – the kind that once existed between Stefan and myself. But there is a love and respect between us. And a friendship that continues to evolve even as I continue to learn more of the mysteries of true relationships of mutual care and respect.

He is my best friend in all the world, and I would not have it any other way.


End file.
